Loving Laos! (More from my old travel journal)

I just realized that I wrote (1/16/08) twice. Either I got my dates mixed up or I was catching up on the 16^th and then made an entry for the 16^th. Either way, I don’t think a day really matters. I hope it doesn’t irritate any of my readers. J

1/16/2008 (Again)

Today we flew from Vientiane to Luang Probang. We did not waste any time when we got here. As soon as check-in was complete we met up with Jim’s friend Paul who is also visiting the area. Paul had already been here a few days so we asked him to point us in the right direction for some local sights. The first stop was the National Museum. The National Museum used to be the house of the royal family. After the revolution, it was turned into a museum. There is no photography or shoes allowed in any of the Laos museums. After the museum, we crossed the street to see some temples and things on the top of a mountain. It seems like most of the things a traveler wants to see can be found on the top of a mountain. To get to the top of this particular mountain you of course take the stairs. At least 400 steps later and you are at a temple overlooking the towns, rivers, forests, and you can even see the stupa across the countryside. Follow the stone pathway to see Buddha shrines in the side of the mountain. Building this place must have been difficult. My favorite part was a Buddha shrine in a cave. This place was very Indiana Jones. Sometimes I feel less like a tourist and more like an archeologist.

Oldest temple I have ever visited is in Luang Probang.

Inside the old temple.

1/17/2008

This morning we were up and outside a little before 6am to give food to the local monks. The ceremony is referred to as “Alms”. Buddhists sit along the sidewalks with things like sticky rice, bananas and other fruits and the monks walk along in a silent procession from the temple. They walk along the streets lined with people to accept the food offerings. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to take part in this ceremony. If you participate, you must have your shoulders, legs and chest covered (men and women). Remain silent. Do not touch the monks, only their food jars. A little tip: Don’t buy your food from the street vendors. Instead, buy your offerings from the market ahead of time. The street vendors will trick you into buying more food than you intended. They slip piles of rice into your basket as if they want to be friendly with you and help you make the offerings for a better experience. After the ceremony is over the vendors will come to collect all the food they forced into your basket. Not only could you get ripped off but the actions from the vendors can cause a disrespectful and noisy scene. Tour busses cannot pass through during the alms since it is considered disrespectful to sit “above” a monk. After all is said and done the Alms is a beautiful spectacle.

The procession for Alms.

Local monk reads a book in the doorway of his "wat".

The night market in Luang Probang. Photo by J.A.Atwood.

After the Alms, we headed to the local morning market. Here, you can find anything from a new blouse (or slightly used J) to vegetables and meat. Speaking of the meat, this is not your local Safeway. The meat is laid out on the ground on top of reed mats or banana leaves. Fish, chicken, duck, frogs, bats, guinea pigs (alive for freshness) and much more are available for all your protein needs. Many of the animals are alive while the larger specimens are laid out in pieces on the mats and leaves ready for the pickiest buyer to sort through.

Meat at the local market.

Laos is like much of Asia when it comes to transportation. Most of the Laos people use motorcycles or motor-scooters. They are small, cheap and use less gas. Only half of them can be seen using a helmet. And pretty much none of the small children use helmets. One motorcycle can transport a family of four. Two adults and two children. They just hop on and go! Don’t get caught in front of one of these things. Crossing a Laos street is worse than crossing a New Jersey street. They do NOT stop for pedestrians.

Later in the morning we took a riverboat to see two villages and another place of Buddha worship. All three places are located along the Mekong River and are best accessed by boat. For the caves with the Buddha statues, it is the only way to get there. Whisky Village was the first stop. Here, they make rice wine and whisky made from sticky rice. I tried some of the wine and it was very sweet. When they bottle the whiskey, they put things like snakes and scorpions in the bottles. The Laos people believe that this mixture is very healthy. They recommend a small cup twice a day to cure rheumatism, lumbago and “sweat of limbs”. They also say that a shot will cure a headache. That one’s probably true. J Anyway, they send this whiskey down the river to be sold in the towns but you can also buy it there in Whiskey Village. It’s cheaper in town.

We traveled further up the river and came to a staircase carved into the side of the cliffs. There were (of course) hundreds of stair-steps to the cave high above. Once you are up there it doesn’t take long to realize that all the exercise was worth it. You need a flashlight for the first cave. Even with all of our flashlights together, (Jim, Paul and me) it was still hard to see the details of what we were standing in front of. I had to use the flash on my camera to make out the intricacies. There were thousands of statues and one large, pointy ornament in the back of the cave. There were little holes and crevaces everywhere and all of them were completely full of Buddha statues that people have left there over the years. Almost all of the figurines in this cave were ancient. There was a second, smaller cave and this too was filled with Buddha statues. Many were very old but this cave also had some newer ones left by more recent worshippers. It was much easier to see in the smaller cave. These places do not have the heavy tourist traffic that you would find at the statue of liberty. They are difficult to get to and they are still sacred places for worship. There is little to no security. There are signs warning people that it is illegal to transport the statues out of the country but there are no glass cases; no steel barriers. There is nothing keeping someone from accessing these artifacts. I can only hope that common respect for the sacred sites keeps them in the same condition for generations to come.

The caves were the highlight of my day. We did stop at one more village after the caves. It was called Paper Village. I would go on about it but if I wrote about all the paper products they made it would probably seem a little prosaic after all the excitement of the caves. I would like to mention one thing about Paper Village though. Jim went looking for a bathroom and when he couldn’t find one he asked a villager where he could relieve himself. The villager replied in broken English “Oh, just go anywhere”. I hope this isn’t always their policy! Yikes!

It was a pretty eventful day. J  

Please do not alter photos in any way. Please only borrow photos for PERSONAL use and please ALWAYS give Dana R. Atwood credit for the pictures you use. Thanks!

My "Old" travel journal...

In order to keep things...well...in order....I need to post entries from my original travel journal before I can post my current adventure. So, although I am currently on a seven week honeymoon to several different places, I am going to make posts from my first international vacation.

Here are my first two entries....

1/15/2008

Being in Laos has been quite the adventure but simply getting here had it’s interesting moments as well. My boyfriend Jim had worked diligently for months on every detail of this trip and shortly before leaving we didn’t even know how much of our traveling fantasy would become a reality. Not only did I lose my voice and sprain my ankle 10 days before departure, but I also lost my passport. Luckily, I found my passport but then I got a stomach flu the day before we were supposed to leave. I was throwing up everything, even water! I had to try to stay hydrated so I kept trying to drink water only to have it come back up again. We still had hopes that I would recover in time so I threw all the clothes and shoes I had lying around my boyfriend’s house into a suitcase and went to bed. Four hours before our ride, to the airport, was to show up I finally stopped vomiting. January 11^th at 8:30am we loaded up and headed to Portland International Airport.

Check-in was a breeze and we hoped it was a sign of things to come but it wasn’t.

We boarded our plane to Seattle where we were going to catch a flight to Tokyo. We were so excited to start our big adventure, we snapped a picture in front of the small shuttle plane before getting on. About 15 minutes into the flight the captain announced that there was a mechanical malfunction on the plane and we were turning around and landing back in Portland. We were going to miss our flight to Tokyo. Portland had a direct flight to Tokyo but it was full. We waited at the airport for five hours before United Airlines informed us that they were sending us to San Francisco. They were providing us with a hotel for the night and then sending us to Tokyo from San Francisco the next day.

On the bright side we figured it would be fun since I had never been to San Francisco.

When we got there we went to the 52^nd floor of the Bank of America Tower to see the view and then we rode a cable car and walked around the boardwalk. Not bad for a crappy re-route.

The next morning we were off to Tokyo! This was not our destination but we did have a layover and connection there. Since we were in business class we got to use some very nice showering facilities in the lounge while we waited for our next flight. It was around this time that I decided my sister-in-law, Bobbie Worrell, be a Japanese woman disguised as a Mexican. Everything was clean and sparkling and PERFECT. Just like her!

Anyway, back on the plane…our next stop was Bangkok.

It seemed to me that airports outside the U.S. are even more strict with security. You have to pass security more than once before boarding your plane. At times, there’s an additional security check at the gate. And you can’t take your liquids even if you bought them in the airport after the first security check. And forget drinking your water and keeping the container to refill it….no containers!

We landed in Bangkok but that was still not our first destination. The Bangkok airport is HUGE! We had a seven hour layover so we stayed at a hotel located inside the airport.

Interesting side note: The Bangkok airport is equipped with a Muslim prayer room.

The next day we had to take two more pictures so we could pass through immigration when we got to Laos. We sat in a photo booth like you might see at the mall and once our photos printed we were able to head to our gate.

The flight was about an hour and still included a full meal. Nice! We were in coach for this leg of the journey and it was still the best meal I have ever had on a plane! There were noodles with vegetables and the vegetables were actually good! Not like the usual over-boiled type you usually see on planes. It seemed like they were actually fresh before they were cooked for the flight. Also, if you ever get the chance to try dragon fruit, you should do it!

We landed in Vientiane, Laos and had to stand in three different lines before finally getting our stamp and going to claim our bags. At this point I have already learned a little bit about Laos. First of all, it’s actually Lao. But we westerners have added an “s” on the end for some reason. But since this journal is for the sake of sharing with my westerner friends and family, I will continue to use the “s”. Laos is one of the last few socialist countries on earth. The average wage here is $4 a day. To say “thank you” in Laos you say “Khob Chi”. “Thank you very much” is “Khob chi li li”. “Hello” is “Saba dee”.

1/16/2008

Our first day in Laos, we decided to just walk around and look at stuff. We saved the tour for the next day. As soon as you arrive in Laos, it is obvious how poor they are. There are very few Laos people who make good wages but they do exist. As for the bulk of the people, they spend their time selling whatever they can, working in rice paddies, or driving a tuk tuk. There are other jobs much those cover the majority. In Laos (Vientiane), the people pile their garbage alongside the streets, making some areas of town very stinky.

There are malnourished dogs everywhere. I have been told by a local taxi driver that there are a few people who do eat dog.

We continued to walk through the busy, dirty streets toward the Mekong Riverbanks. It was there that we decided to stop for lunch at a local food cart. We looked over all the BBQ’d meat and picked something out. It was either a small bird or rodent. I’m still not sure which but it was tasty enough. As long as you can ignore all the flies and the less than sanitary conditions of what they use to cook and serve the food then I would recommend this cart to anyone. ;-)

In Laos, there are temples everywhere. The temples themselves remain locked until the monks go in to pay their respects to Buddha, but the grounds remain open for anyone to look around, meditate, or visit friends. The monks live on the property in buildings next to the temple. In Laos, there are monks everywhere. We decided to return to one of the temples close to our hotel to see what a typical temple session looked like. We were late and missed most of it but as soon as it was over and filed out of the temple, we met Woodlam. He spoke with us a while about Laos, the people and Buddhism. It was getting late so we told Woodlam we would return to visit the next day.

This is Woodlam.

There’s a lot to describe when it comes to Vientiane, Laos but I need to catch up on this journal. Just a couple highlights about yesterday and I will have to move on.

Our second day in Vientiane was set aside for a tour. Here, you pay a taxi driver to host you for the day. Our driver’s name was Meun (Moon) and he spoke pretty good English. Of all the places we went, the two that stand out are the “suburb” and Buddha Park.

A suburb in Laos is, of course, nothing like an American suburb. The streets are made of dirt and the locals get very excited about foreign visitors since they rarely (and I mean RARELY) see anyone of another skin tone or who speaks another language. We stopped at a local temple to speak with the people and the monk in charge of that temple. All were very friendly and happy to see us. The women said that they wished their skin was fair like mine. I told them how many women in the U.S. actually try to turn their skin tone dark like theirs. We took pictures, joked around, and then left after making our donation to the monk and giving the neighborhood 2,000 kip (which would be about 20¢ U.S.). This was enough to buy all of them a Pepsi. There were about 10 of them. Since Laos has its own bottling company, a traveler may want to be careful about drinking too many local sodas. The Laos people also leave trash along the riverbanks. Even the locals drink bottled water.

Buddha Park was simply a huge piece of land with a whole bunch of Buddha statues all over it. Some are pretty small and others are HUGE. They also had some sort of ancient stone building which holds….guess what!....a bunch of stone Buddha statues! To get inside this, half buried, stone structure you have to crawl into the mouth of a dragon. I’m serious…the entrance is carved stone. It’s a dragon and the hole you use to get inside is the mouth. It’s tiny…so you have to crawl. Once inside, you crawl up some tiny little stairs to the top of the structure. In this park, you are pretty much climbing all over ancient ruins. It’s pretty AMAZING!

Dragon Entrance (Buddha Park)

Giant statue at Buddha Park.

Once we got back to town we changed and headed to Woodlam’s temple. All the monks were working so the temple was closed. Woodlam saw us and he opened the temple so we could pay our respect to Buddha and meditate. After we meditated, Woodlam gave me his only book about Buddhism that was written in English.

Worship with Woodlam.

After a traditional Laos dinner, which included deep-fried crickets, we returned to the hotel to rest up so we could travel to Luang Probang the next day.

Please do not alter photos in any way. Please only borrow photos for PERSONAL use and please ALWAYS give Dana R. Atwood credit for the pictures you use. Thanks!

My first blog entry...

This is my first blog. I'm actually pretty excited to be able to say anything I want about whatever I want. My plan is to use this blog to describe "all things Dana". I think the internet provides us with a phenomenal tool to keep up with friends, family, and even social icons on a totally different level. I'm such a busy person that this is just what I need to share my life with those I love and those who are curious.

Welcome to my blog!

Please do not alter photos in any way. Please only borrow photos for PERSONAL use and please ALWAYS give Dana R. Atwood credit for the pictures you use. Thanks!